Strangled Silence (31 page)

'We can't leave him!' Amina was saying under
her breath.

'We can't help him!' Chi retorted. 'What use
are we to him if we get arrested too? We're
accomplices now and as soon as they find the mic
and earpiece he was wearing, they'll be looking for
whoever was at the other end of the line.'

He was still listening to Ivor's microphone, but
there wasn't much being said now. The crime scene
was being secured. London's transport system had
slow reflexes; Amina didn't know if the Transport
Police would stop the trains leaving the station or
not, but what was important was that she and Chi
got lost in the crowd. Chi told her it was Sykes who
had arrested Ivor and if he spotted the two of them
as well, he couldn't help but be suspicious. They
reached a Central Line platform just as a train was
about to leave. Jumping on board, they waited for
what seemed like an age until the doors closed and
the train started moving.

'You need to get to work,' Chi whispered to
her. 'Turn this back into a normal day.'

She nodded, irritated at having him tell her
what to do. She knew what to do. But she couldn't
help thinking of Ivor and how they were deserting
him. Chi was right, there was no way they could
help – at least not yet. Their best hope was making
this story as public as possible and quickly. She had
to convince Goldbloom to take this on . . . and if he
wouldn't, then she'd find someone who would.

'Listen,' Chi said softly as the train rolled into
Bank station. 'Come over to my place tonight.
Shang spilled the beans over the phone. We've no
evidence, but we've got what are almost his dying
words. We need to sort out what we're going to do
with them. Don't do anything until then, OK? And
stay safe, Amina. We're all marked now. They could
come for us anytime.'

The doors opened and he slipped onto the
platform without looking back. In seconds he was
out of sight along the tiled corridor leading to the
surface. Amina decided to get off at the next station.
She needed to get above ground again, to breathe
the open air, no matter how grimy or polluted. Her
nerves were on edge, she flinched when anyone
brushed against her. Her hands clasped and
unclasped and her jaw was tight and tense. Her
pulse thudded in her ears. She couldn't go on this
way. If she ever hoped to survive this, she was going
to need some protection.

And she knew just where to get it.

Tariq knew he was becoming a disappointment to
his father. Unlike his father, he had no military
ambitions. The prospect of a career in the Royal
Marines held no attraction for him whatsoever.
Who'd want to spend their life getting ordered
around and having a loudmouth sergeant bellowing
at them for not folding their clothes right, or for
failing to do enough press-ups? What kind of a life
was that?

Martin Mir was not an unreasonable man. He
would have been happy to see Tariq show any kind
of ambition at all. But Tariq was not in an ambition
frame of mind and he saw no reason why he should
be planning how to spend the rest of his life at the
tender age of fifteen.

It was hard enough trying to survive school.
Amina's mix of looks, brains and popularity made
her path through the world of education appear
effortless. Tariq, on the other hand, seemed to
stumble from one mismatched class to the next,
suffering his education much as one would the
pulling of a succession of bad teeth.

Now he was going to have to ask to move
school again. He couldn't take the torture any
longer and he was afraid of what he was going to
do. He didn't want to be expelled again. His parents
wouldn't stand for it. His father would send him
straight to press-up school if that happened.

Tariq knew they wouldn't understand, no
matter how he tried to explain. He was in hell. His
head buzzed with angry, conflicting thoughts. It was
almost impossible to sleep. Most nights, he lay there,
drifting between a restless doze and frustrating
wakefulness. The coming of every morning meant
facing his torment, tired, depressed – already
beaten. Something had to give. He had to get out
of that school.

To his surprise, Amina was home when he got
in. She was coming down the stairs carrying her
handbag, looking pale and distracted.

'Hey,' she said.

'Hey,' he replied. 'What's up? Thought you'd be
at work.'

'Had to take a half day to do some stuff,'
she told him, tucking her bag behind her as
if he might grab it from her. 'How was school?'

'Gimme a break!' he snorted.

'I was just asking.' Her tone was distant, as if her
mind was miles away. She reached the bottom of
the stairs and stopped him before he closed the
front door. 'I'm off. See you later, yeah?'

'Sure.' He threw his bag into its place under the
stairs. A thought occurred to him. 'Hey! Did you
find out any more about that mind-control thing
you were working on? It's just that this game
they've got us playing in school is—'

'Look, Tariq,' she sighed, putting her hand to
her face in an exasperated gesture that reminded
him of their mother. 'Nobody's brainwashing you
with a computer game, all right? Computer games
don't rot your brain. You're a teenager. You'll be
screwed up for a few more years and then things'll
work themselves out, yeah? Everybody thinks that
school is messing with their minds. Look at all
those kids who go shooting up their classes with a
semi-automatic because they can't cope. They think
the world's out to get them. But you know what? It
isn't. And believe me, I know the difference.'

Tariq stared at her with a quizzical expression.

'Bloody hell, I can't decide who's more
patronizing: you or the army guy in class. At least
he's getting paid to talk crap. Why don't you go stuff
yourself, you snotty cow?'

Amina went to say something, but held back,
turning and walking out the door instead. The door
slammed shut and Tariq glared at it for a moment,
his face twisted into a sneer. Who the hell did she
think she was? A few years older than him and she
was acting like one his teachers. Sometimes he felt
like just . . . As he stood there, fuming at her words,
he was struck with an idea. 'Look at all those kids
who go shooting up their classes with a semiautomatic
because they can't cope.' Yeah. The
schools were terrified of that kind of thing.
Everybody was. Everyone was waiting for the next
kid to snap and commit another massacre.

Tariq pounded up the stairs to his parents'
room, opened the wardrobe and reached up for the
lockbox that sat on the shelf above the hangers. He
would never hurt anybody – he wasn't crazy – but
a good scare would knock some sense into Alan
Noble and his mates.

Sitting down on his parents' bed, he ran his
hands over the ribbed surface of the graphitecoloured
lockbox. It was about half the size of a
briefcase and made of hardened steel. This was the
box where their father kept his Browning Hi-Power
9mm automatic. Tariq tapped in the
combination on the keypad. He had worked out
the combination number years ago; it was 1664: the
date that the Duke of York and Albany's Maritime
Regiment of Foot was established. The fighting
force that would become known as the Royal
Marines.

He would just scare the assholes – he wouldn't
take the safety catch off. He wouldn't even put any
rounds in the clip. It would be a simple matter of
catching them somewhere quiet. Point the weapon
at them and pull back the hammer for that loud
click. For just a few seconds, he'd be that lunatic
that every school dreaded. He smiled in grim
anticipation. They'd absolutely piss themselves.

The automatic would be back in its box before
his father even knew it was gone. Chances were,
Noble and the others wouldn't tell a soul about
what had happened. The more he thought about it,
the more sure he was about doing this. He was a
desperate man. Drawing in a shaky breath, he
opened the case. Tariq stared for most of a minute
before releasing the breath in a gasp.

The gun was gone.

When Amina reached Chi's house, the feeling of
being watched was palpable. It was almost as if the
Scalps had withheld their presence from her before,
but now they were allowing her senses to pick
them up on some subliminal level. Her skin was
crawling around her neck and shoulders as she rang
the doorbell.

Chi let her in without a word and immediately
returned to his study, where he began walking back
and forth, running his hands through his hair.
Amina had the definite impression that he had been
doing this for some time. The place was in a state of
chaos; she would have suspected it had been
ransacked except for the way the untidy piles
appeared to have been categorized. He pointed at
the PC and she sat down, pressing 'Play' on the
media player window that dominated the screen.
Shang's hollow, phone-distorted voice told its story.
Amina listened, a weight growing in the pit of her
stomach. She played it again when it was finished.
She had expected to feel relief at finally discovering
the reason for everything they had experienced –
instead, she felt only a horrible empty fear.

'That's it?' she said quietly. 'There's no war?
How . . . how can that be? How is that
possible? How can you fake a whole war? God, all
those soldiers killed . . . maimed. That's insane.'

Chi nodded. He kept pacing, his lower lip red
from where he had been chewing it.

'It wasn't real, but it's real now,' he said hoarsely,
as if he had been shouting all afternoon. 'There are
terrorists there, there's real fighting. We can't prove
there's no war because they've created one out of
nothing. The illusion's been replaced by the real
thing. We're screwed. All day, I've been trying to
work out what we can do, but I can't think of
anything. Without proof from somebody on the
inside, we are absolutely screwed.'

'But we have this!' Amina pointed at the screen.
'People will have to listen to us if we show them
this.'

'They've already done a job on him though,
haven't they?' he replied. 'Even if we could prove it
really was him speaking, he's been discredited.
They've already changed the world's perception
of him. He's a terrorist now – nobody can believe
a word he says and he's not alive to back it
up.'

'It would still stir things up,' Amina insisted.

'Sure, enough to get us killed, maybe,' Chi
retorted. 'But enough to bring the whole thing
down? I don't think so. I've seen attempts like that
before – and for things far less important than this.
This lie is so big, nobody will believe it's possible
unless they're forced to.'

He stopped pacing and gazed at her with a
helpless expression.

'You know what else is getting me? Shang was
dead before we got there. We knew he must be
desperate to risk exposing himself like that. He
really had to have that money. He was so dangerous
they would have nabbed him as soon as they found
him, but they only got to him when he reached the
meeting point. Somehow, they found out about
the meeting.

'We can guess they weren't tracking
him
,
because they'd never have let us get that close. Ivor
called him from an anonymous callbox . . . They
could have listened in if they got the number in
time, but . . . I don't know. The only other time
Ivor would have mentioned the meeting is here, in
this house. In
my
house.'

Amina could see that this had disturbed Chi
more than he was willing to admit. She supposed
that after all his precautions, he had considered his
home safe from prying eyes and ears.

'I've scanned the house a dozen times,' he said
softly. 'I've turned the place inside out. I can't figure
out how they did it.'

Amina felt a deep sympathy for him, seeing his
defences collapsing like this. She had learned
enough about this business by now to know that
they were amateurs playing a professional's game
and they had survived this far by sheer luck as much
as anything else. Despite his greater awareness of
their adversary, Chi seemed to have lived in a
bubble of delusion as far as his security was
concerned.

'Maybe they've got some kind of transmitter
you can't pick up?' she offered helpfully, prompting
a dismissive sniff from the disgruntled electronics
expert. 'Well, why not? Or maybe it's something
they switch on after you've done your scanning?
They might know your routine. You know, they
could just wait until you're off-guard.'

'It's possible.' He shrugged. 'But the room's
insulated against thermal imaging, I've got a copper
mesh in the walls and doors that act like a Faraday
cage to prevent radio signals passing through, and
there are no windows from which to pick up sound
vibrations passing through the glass. Even then,
I monitor for all forms of transmission and I
routinely search the place for recording devices –
anything that's new or out of place, any trace of
unexplained metal or electrical activity or . . . or
. . . anything. If you can think of something I can't,
please enlighten me.' He paused for a second. 'That
said, I know they can get in without setting off the
alarm, so maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am.'

He told her about the man who had left the
message in his kitchen.

'A dead mouse?' she exclaimed, shuddering.
'They're pretty twisted, aren't they? Whatever
happened to just saying "Shut up or you're dead" or
something like that?'

'Suppose it's scarier to be weird.'

'Still, at least your curiosity didn't kill your cat,
huh?'

'Ha ha.'

Amina's eyes fell on Roswell, who was curled
up asleep in a pile of papers in one corner.

'Hey, maybe Ros is on their payroll,' she said in
another lame attempt at a joke. 'She's selling you
out for tuna.'

'Oh, you're on form today—' he sneered, but
then stopped.

Walking over to where his cat was dozing, he
picked her up, ignoring her sleepy, irritated protests.
Sitting down at his worktable, he looked her over.
She glared balefully back at him, but the hold he
had on the back of her neck kept her still. Chi
unbuckled her collar and held it up to the light. As
soon as he released his grip on the cat, she bounded
away to the other side of the room. Squinting at the
collar, Chi tilted the buckle one way and then the
other.

'Damn,' he said. 'This has been fiddled with.'

The leather of the strap folded round one side
of the buckle and was held in place by a stud. He
took out a penknife and prised the stud out, but
instead of coming out in one piece, the top popped
off, revealing a tiny hollow inside.

'Bastards,' he grunted. 'Bastards bugged my cat.'

He picked up a needle and jammed it into the
device, disconnecting it. Switching on a magnifying
lamp that sat on the table, he peered through the
lens at the hollow stud.

'Best work I've ever seen,' he muttered in
reluctant admiration, as Amina peered over his
shoulder. 'The chip is half the size of anything I
could get my hands on . . . the mic is tucked inside
the fold of the leather, but it must still pick up
sound. I'd love to know how they managed that.
Hell, the thing doesn't even need batteries! See
these contacts on the underside? It runs on the
electricity in Roswell's body. They just wait for her
to come outside, attract her over with . . . I don't
know, a bit of tuna, and just download the new
material. Clever, clever, clever. Damn, they're good.'